Genesis 2.0 Beta Now Available

StudioPress has been pleased to announce that Genesis 2.0 Beta is now available!

Genesis 2.0 utilizes HTML5 to provide a number of features that we’re very excited to share with you, so can get testing.

Brand New Design

Genesis is sporting a fresh new look.

We’ve taken advantage of the new HTML5 markup, as well as some snazzy CSS3, and we think you’re gonna love this.

HTML5 Markup

Genesis has always been on the cutting edge of web technology, and Genesis 2.0 continues in that excellent tradition.

With a single line of code in a child theme, Genesis will now output HTML5 markup in place of the old XHTML tags. Also, every theme we build in the future will be developed on HTML5.

Microdata

If you’re using a theme with HTML5 enabled, Genesis will also output your markup using microdata.

We did all the research and modified the markup to serve search engines the microdata they’re looking for, so you don’t have to. It’s good to be a Genesis user.

Removing Features

We want to keep Genesis as lightweight as possible for you, nobody wants to use bloated software.

So we’ve removed the “Latest Tweets” widget, the “eNews and Updates” widget, the “post templates” feature, and the “fancy dropdowns” setting. There are some good plugins you can grab and install, if you want to continue using those functionalities.

Boring, but Very Important

We’re always improving. Call it a sickness, but we like to make things work really, really well. Here’s a list of the technical changes in this latest release of Genesis:

Better named loop hooks for HTML5.

Network Upgrade now upgrades the Genesis database for all sites in a network when running WordPress in multisite mode.

Widget classes are now coded in PHP5 format.

Admin CSS and Javascript are now minified.

Inline HTML comments have been removed to reduce page size.

The Scripts option now has its own metabox when editing an entry.

Custom Post Type archive pages now have a settings page so you can control the output.

Genesis tracks displayed entry IDs so you can exclude entries from showing twice on a page.

Entries without titles now display a permalink after the post content.

How to Upgrade to Genesis 2.0 Beta

One of the very cool features that we’ve included in Genesis 1.8 is the ability to automatically update to future Beta versions of Genesis.

This is similar to the WordPress Beta Tester plugin that exists — the only difference is that users won’t have access to the bleeding version of Genesis.

You can automatically update your site to this version by downloading and installing our Genesis Beta Tester plugin.

If you don’t see the update notice via the plugin, we’ve also added the Genesis 2.0 Beta and Genesis Sample 2.0 Beta theme to the Member Downloads so you can login and access theme there as well.

Reporting Bugs

If you’re testing Genesis 2.0 Beta and would like to report a bug, head on over to our help area and fill out the form.